Ring Of Fire Summer
‘Ring of fire’ solar eclipse thrills skywatchers on longest day
Hong Kong (AFP) – Skywatchers along a narrow band from west Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, India and the Far East witnessed a dramatic “ring of fire” solar eclipse Sunday.
So-called annular eclipses occur when the Moon — passing between Earth and the Sun — is not quite close enough to our planet to completely obscure sunlight, leaving a thin ring of the solar disc visible.
They happen every year or two, and can only be seen from a narrow pathway across the planet.
Sunday’s eclipse arrived on the northern hemisphere’s longest day of the year — the summer solstice — when the North Pole is tilted most directly towards the Sun.
It was first visible in northeastern Republic of Congo from 5:56 local time (04:56 GMT) just a few minutes after sunrise.
“The Mustang GT will not go any faster than 159 miles per hour. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.”
A Man Drove Solo Across America in 25 Hours 55 Minutes in a Rental Mustang
Fred Ashmore rented a Mustang GT, crammed it full of fuel tanks, and drove from New York City to Los Angeles in under 26 hours, shattering the solo Cannonball record.
BY ANGELO MELLUSO
You’ll be forgiven for stifling a yawn as we delve into the details of yet another Cannonball record. And although the overall New York City-to-Redondo Beach, California record has allegedly been broken again by some folks who have not yet emerged from the shadowy world of hearsay and conjecture, that’s not the one we’re going to tell you about today. What we’re here to talk about is a record that’s so stupid it’s brilliant, and so crazy it’s just about what we’ve come to expect as the elapsed times on these ill-advised adventures have crept ever closer to the 24-hour mark.
We’re talking about a solo run. One man, one car, a whole lot of gasoline, and an alleged 25-hour, 55-minute elapsed time. That’s an average speed of nearly 108 miles per hour.
If you’ve been following our coverage, you’ll know that a lot of people got excited last November when Arne Toman, Doug Tabbutt, and Berkeley Chadwick destroyed a coast-to-coast timethat had stood since 2013, behind the wheel of a superbly prepared, blisteringly fast 2015 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG sedan that carried them across this nation in 27 hours and 25 minutes. You’ll also know that, since then, we’ve offered limited coverage of the rash of coast-to-coast record attempts made since then.
And you’ll recall some measure of derision aimed at the trio (or quartet, who knows) of shteebs who borrowed someone’s daddy’s Audi, ratchet-strapped a couple of marine fuel tanks into the trunk, and blasted to glory while most of the country was closed as a global pandemic exacted its grim toll.
But while most of us were twiddling our thumbs at home during the COVID-19 closures (or mourning the loss of our jobs, or dying), a handful of scofflaw endurance drivers were busy making tracks from New York to L.A. Several of these were solo runs, and those of us in the know watched, amazed, as the time it took one person to drive 2800 miles nonstop plummeted from the low-to-mid-30s to just under 28 hours. Even those times, set only a few months ago, were blown out of the water recently when Fred Ashmore, 44, of Hancock, Maine, rented a Mustang GT, removed its passenger seats and other interior accessories, strapped in enough extra fuel tanks to bump the car’s capacity to around 130 gallons, and made the trip from the Red Ball garage in Manhattan to the Portofino Hotel & Marina in Redondo Beach with only one stop for fuel.
“The Mustang GT will not go any faster than 159 miles per hour,” he told Road & Track. “Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.”
The White Collection
Khruangbin
‘Was It a Lost Psych-Funk Classic?’ It’s Khruangbin, Right Now
The Houston trio’s third album adds a new chapter to the band’s improbable story.
By Marcus J. Moore
In 2013, the producer and D.J. Bonobo released his version of “Late Night Tales,” the long-running musician-curated album series. The compilation’s theme was serene songs meant to soundtrack the night, and he included “A Calf Born in Winter” from a band called Khruangbin, an upstart Houston trio that hadn’t yet made a full album.
Bonobo had met two of its members, the bassist Laura Lee and the guitarist Mark Speer, in 2010 when they were touring with another band. What he heard of their own project made a strong impression. “The analogue timbres and subtleties of the melodies were incredible,” he wrote in an email. He didn’t forget about Khruangbin, and made an effort to introduce them to everyone he could — Bonobo was among the first to spread Khruangbin’s music by word of mouth, but he certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Amazing Disturbing
They’re Right Next Door
Up to 36 ‘intelligent alien races’ could be living in our galaxy, scientists say
Scientists from the University of Nottingham have calculated that there could be more than 30 active communicating intelligent civilisations in the Milky Way
By Mark Waghorn & Shivali Best
We are not alone – with 36 intelligent alien races living in our galaxy, according to a new study.
British scientists have calculated that there could be dozens of other extra terrestrial lifeforms within the Milky Way.
But they said it is likely the average distance to such civilisations would be 17,000 light-years – making detection and communication “very difficult” with our present technology.
Their findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal, aim to shed fresh light on the age old question whether there are other life forms within our Universe.
The University of Nottingham team said that obtaining good estimates of the number of possible extraterrestrial civilisations has previously been “very challenging.”
They decided to take a new approach to the problem.
Kari Gunter-Seymour
Meet Ohio’s New Poet Laureate: Kari Gunter-Seymour
Governor Mike DeWine has picked Kari Gunter-Seymour to be Ohio’s new poet laureate.
In the middle of a pandemic and nationwide protests, Kari Gunter-Seymour says poetry is more important than ever.
“When we write our truths, we bring things to light and create understanding. And from there we grow and find our way through these things that are so difficult for us right now,” she says.
And Ohio’s new poet laureate won’t be resting on her laurels. Gunter-Seymour says she applied for the position because it would allow her to bring poetry to people in need.
“The thing that I want to do the very most is work with teens and adults in recovery because of the healing nature of poetry.”
Six Million Dollar Man Soon
Elon Musk ‘a year away from creating Six Million Dollar Man through implanted chips’
Billionaire Elon Musk says the chips, which will be implanted in human brains, will allow paralysed people to walk again, similar to 1970s cult TV show The Six Million Dollar Man, starring Lee Majors
Space billionaire Elon Musk says he is just one year away from creating the ‘six million dollar man’.
The eccentric tech tycoon said implanting chips into the human brain will allow paralysed people to walk again.
His new device will help improve vision, strength and host of other injuries connected to the brain.
Musk, 48, said: “The device would be implanted in your skull.
“Electrode threads would be inserted carefully into the brain and you wouldn’t know that somebody has it.
“It can interface anywhere in the brain.
“In principle it can fix almost anything that is wrong with the brain and it can restore limb functionality.
Great East Japan Earthquake
Remembering The Tibetan Freedom Concert
Quarantine Classic Concerts: Tibetan Freedom Concert
This was peak ’90s
Rock ‘n roll and politics have a long, intertwined history — and it’s hard to find a better example than the Tibetan Freedom Concert.
Beginning in 1996 at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the festival brought together many of the biggest artists of that time for one reason: liberating Tibet from decades of crippling control at the hands of China’s Communist regime. The festival was spearheaded by the Beastie Boys, and in particular, the late Adam “MCA” Yauch, who cared deeply about this mission.
We’ll touch more on the genesis of the concert in a moment. But first, let’s get to the reason you probably clicked on this article to begin with — the music.
These bills were loaded. The Tibetan Freedom Concert continued to run into the early ‘00s, but it’s biggest years were between 1996 to 1998. Here’s just a taste of the artists who performed during the festival’s late ‘90s prime: Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Beck, Bjork, Alanis Morissette, Patti Smith, No Doubt, KRS-One, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Pearl Jam U2, Foo Fighters, Wyclef Jean, Biz Markie, Radiohead, R.E.M., and, of course, the Beastie Boys. What more could you want?
And since they were the ringleaders, we’ve gotta start off with the Beasties.
Inside Party Girls
Inside the shady world of promoters who recruit ‘hot girls’ for parties
For years, Ashley Mears would get text messages from Thibault,* a Manhattan club promoter she met when she was a model in the early 2000s.
“He would always text the same thing, like, ‘Oh baby, sushi dinner this weekend. Are you coming?’ ” recalled Mears.
Still, she never blocked his messages. Plenty of her acquaintances knew Thibault: He and his crew were notorious for hanging around modeling agencies, pursuing beautiful young women to fill VIP tables at exclusive nightclubs like 1OAK and Lavo. And she remained intrigued.
So, finally, in 2011 — after she had left New York City for a sociology professorship at Boston University — she responded to one of his invites.
“I was like, ‘I’m curious about this sushi dinner. Yeah, I’ll come,’ ” she said.
Fight The Power
25 Songs About Racism That Are Still Sadly Relevant Today
From “Fight the Power” to “Freedom”
Black artists have played a vital role in shaping American music for hundreds of years — be it jazz, gospel, blues, hip-hop or the invention of rock ‘n’ roll. (Sadly, like in all other facets of life in this country, those artists were by and large ripped off, taken advantage of and never properly given their due.) But while Black musicians have had to deal with racism from audiences and the industry alike, they haven’t let it impact their artistry. Music can be a balm or a megaphone, and songs have been used to protest racism for decades.
Sadly, as this past week has evidenced, those songs are just as relevant today. The names get swapped out for new ones — “The Death of Emmett Till” has been replaced with lyrical references to Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, “Birmingham Sunday” and “Mississippi Goddam” swapped out for “Baltimore” — but the deaths and the injustices keep on coming. These songs are, of course, just the top of the iceberg, but in the wake of the death of George Floyd, they’re all essential listens.
Tabernanthe iboga
Can a Powerful Psychedelic Fight the Opioid Crisis?
By Ross Pomeroy
46,802 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2018, the latest year for which CDC data is available. This painful cost has been exacted regularly in recent years, the price of rampant opioid overprescription and profit-hungry pharmaceutical companies.
Preventing these deaths means finding an effective way to treat opioid addiction. Somewhere around two million Americans suffer from opioid-related substance use disorder. Treatments like buprenorphine and methadone calm the brain circuits affected by opioids, reducing cravings and withdrawal. In conjunction with counseling, these medications can gradually ferry addicted individuals back to normalcy. Unfortunately, medications are underutilized and states generally lack the resources to provide them to all afflicted individuals.
It is into this quagmire that some have suggested inserting a new, surprising treatment: a powerful psychedelic drug called ibogaine.
Derived from the root or bark of a West African shrub called Tabernanthe iboga, ibogaine has been used in the Bwiti spiritual discipline of the forest-dwelling Punu and Mitsogo peoples of Gabon for generations. Unforgettable to those who have taken it, a high dose of ibogaine induces an “oneirogenic” waking dream-like state for as long as 36 hours, with introspective effects that can last for months afterwards, supposedly permitting takers to conquer their fears and negative emotions.
Conway Knot Problem Gone
A Grad Student Solved the Epic Conway Knot Problem—in a Week
Lisa Piccirillo encountered the more than 50-year-old question by chance at a conference. Her solution relies on a classical tool called the knot trace.
IN THE SUMMER of 2018, at a conference on low-dimensional topology and geometry, Lisa Piccirillo heard about a nice little math problem. It seemed like a good testing ground for some techniques she had been developing as a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin.
“I didn’t allow myself to work on it during the day,” she said, “because I didn’t consider it to be real math. I thought it was, like, my homework.”
The question asked whether the Conway knot—a snarl discovered more than half a century ago by the legendary mathematician John Horton Conway—is a slice of a higher-dimensional knot. “Sliceness” is one of the first natural questions knot theorists ask about knots in higher-dimensional spaces, and mathematicians had been able to answer it for all of the thousands of knots with 12 or fewer crossings—except one. The Conway knot, which has 11 crossings, had thumbed its nose at mathematicians for decades.
Before the week was out, Piccirillo had an answer: The Conway knot is not “slice.” A few days later, she met with Cameron Gordon, a professor at UT Austin, and casually mentioned her solution.
From The Master
Pursuit as Happiness
That year we had planned to fish for marlin off the Cuban coast for a month. The month started the tenth of April and by the tenth of May we had twenty-five marlin and the charter was over. The thing to have done then would have been to buy some presents to take back to Key West and fill the Anita with just a little more expensive Cuban gas than was necessary to run across, get cleared, and go home. But the big fish had not started to run.
“Do you want to try her another month, Cap?” Mr. Josie asked. He owned the Anita and was chartering her for ten dollars a day. The standard charter price then was thirty-five a day. “If you want to stay, I can cut her to nine dollars.”
“Where would we get the nine dollars?”
“You pay me when you get it. You got good credit with the Standard Oil Company at Belot across the bay, and when we get the bill I can pay them from last month’s charter money. If we get bad weather, you can write something.”
“All right,” I said, and we fished another month. We had forty-two marlin by then and still the big ones had not come. There was a dark, heavy stream close in to the Morro—sometimes there would be acres of bait—and there were flying fish going out from under the bows and birds working all the time. But we had not raised one of the huge marlin, although we were catching, or losing, white marlin each day and on one day I caught five.
We were very popular along the waterfront because we butchered all our fish and gave them away, and when we came in past the Morro Castle and up the channel toward the San Francisco piers with a marlin flag up we could see the crowd starting to run for the docks. The fish was worth from eight to twelve cents a pound that year to a fisherman and twice that in the market. The day we came in with five flags, the police had to charge the crowd with clubs. It was ugly and bad. But that was an ugly and bad year ashore.
Dre on Social Media
Dr Dre Believes Social Media ‘Destroyed’ Artist Mystique
“I probably would’ve hated social media when I was coming up”
The current generation of artists would probably tell you social media helped lead to their success, but not Dr. Dre. The hip-hop titan is old-school, and to him Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and all the rest have done nothing more than destroy the artist mystique.
During a chat with fellow music mogul and Beats Electronics co-founder Jimmy Iovine for British GQ, Dre expressed his qualms with these platforms. “I probably would’ve hated social media when I was coming up,” he confessed. “There’s a certain mystique that gets destroyed. I like the mystique. I like waiting. I don’t need anybody to know where I am every minute or what I’m doing. Or what I’m about to do… There’s a certain mystique that came along with music that was entertaining to wait to see what was about to happen.”
Christo Gone
Christo, artist who wrapped the Reichstag, dies aged 84
Bulgarian creator of large-scale public artworks worked in collaboration with wife Jeanne-Claude
by Alex Needham
The artist Christo, known for wrapping buildings including Berlin’s Reichstag, and also swathing areas of coast and entire islands in fabric, has died aged 84. The news was confirmed on his official Facebook page, which said that he died of natural causes at his home in New York.
Born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff in Bulgaria, Christo studied in Sofia and then defected to the west in 1957, stowing away on a train from Prague to Vienna. Two years later he met Frenchwoman Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, who would become his artistic partner and wife until her death in 2009.
Earth Splitting?
The Mysterious Anomaly Weakening Earth’s Magnetic Field Seems to Be Splitting
by PETER DOCKRILL
New satellite data from the European Space Agency (ESA) reveal that the mysterious anomaly weakening Earth’s magnetic field continues to evolve, with the most recent observations showing we could soon be dealing with more than one of these strange phenomena.
The South Atlantic Anomaly is a vast expanse of reduced magnetic intensity in Earth’s magnetic field, extending all the way from South America to southwest Africa.
Since our planet’s magnetic field acts as a kind of shield – protecting Earth from solar winds and cosmic radiation, in addition to determining the location of the magnetic poles – any reduction in its strength is an important event we need to monitor closely, as these changes could ultimately have significant implications for our planet.
SuperBob
THE WRETCHED @ the Drive-in
How low-budget horror movie The Wretched became America’s No. 1 film
The supernatural shocker expanded to 45 drive-ins this weekend.
By Clark Collis
At the start of the year, the biggest movies set to be released in May looked like Fast & Furious 9, Spiral: From the Book of Saw, Black Widow, Scoob, and Artemis Fowl. Instead, the coronavirus outbreak prompted studios to either postpone the movies’ premieres or announce that they would debut on a streaming service. The most successful new film, according to Box Office Mojo, has been a supernatural indie-horror movie called The Wretched, which has dominated the website’s daily chart since it was released on May 1. As of Thursday, The Wretched — about a teenager who discovers that a malevolent witch is living next door to his father — had been the No. 1 film in America for three weeks.
“It’s actually been a complete shock and kind of insane,” says the Detroit-raised Brett Pierce, who directed the film with his brother Drew. “We were a little movie from Michigan. We always aimed for the moon, but with an independent film you think, Yeah, we’ll come out in a few theaters, and we’ll play for like a week, and maybe ten people will see it. Most people are going to see it when we land on a streaming service at some point. Each week it just kept on getting bigger, it was one of those things where you just don’t believe it as it’s happening. We’re going to be a Jeopardy question one day, because we’re going to be the lowest-grossing most successful film.”
Accelerating AI
What History Tells Us About the Accelerating AI Revolution
By Irving Wladawsky-Berger
A few weeks before our lives were turned upside down by Covid-19, I read Technology at Work v4.0, the fourth report in the Technology at Work Series developed by Citigroup in collaboration with Oxford University. The report includes an excellent chapter on What History Tells Us About the Coming AI Revolution by Oxford professor Carl Benedikt Frey based on his 2019 book The Technology Trap.
Recent AI advances have “sparked much excitement… yet despite this, most ordinary people don’t feel particularly optimistic about the future,” wrote Mr. Frey. For example, a 2017 Pew Research survey found that three quarters of Americans expressed serious concerns about AI and automation, and just over a third believe that their children will be better off financially than they were.
But, in fact, serious concerns about the impact of technology are part of a historical pattern. “Many of the trends we see today, such as the disappearance of middle-income jobs, stagnant wages and growing inequality were also features of the Industrial Revolution,” he writes.
“We are at the brink of a technological revolution that promises not just to fundamentally alter the structure of our economy, but also to reshape the social fabric more broadly. History tells us anxiety tends to accompany rapid technological change, especially when technology takes the form of capital which threatens people’s jobs.”
As the Covid-19 pandemic looks to likely accelerate the rate and pace of technological change, what can we learn from the Industrial Revolution that can help us better face our emerging AI revolution? Let me summarize some of Mr. Frey’s key points.
Nurse Nearly-nude
‘Hot’ nurse disciplined for wearing bra and panties under see-through PPE gown
This naughty nurse is going viral.
A nurse in Russia was suspended from the hospital where she worked in Tula, 100 miles south of Moscow, after she arrived at her shift in the all-male coronavirus patient wing with no clothing save for her skivvies under her transparent personal protective equipment.
The unidentified staffer told her managers at Tula Regional Clinical Hospital that she was “too hot” to wear clothing underneath the head-to-toe vinyl gown, which protected her from contracting COVID-19. The incident was first reported by a local news outlet, the Tula Pressa newspaper.
While there were reportedly “no complaints” from her patients, hospital chiefs punished the nearly nude nurse for “non-compliance with the requirements for medical clothing.” The nurse claimed she did not realize that her underwear was showing through the PPE.
The Other Plague
They’re Back: Millions Of Cicadas Expected To Emerge This Year
by Jason Slotkin
As summer nears, 2020 has another trick up its sleeve. This time, it’s cicadas. A lot of cicadas.
In parts of southwestern Virginia, North Carolina and West Virginia, it’s nearly time for a brood of the insects to emerge for their once-in-17-year mating season. As many as 1.5 million cicadas could emerge per acre. And did we mention the bugs are known for their distinct — and overwhelming — chirping?
“Communities and farms with large numbers of cicadas emerging at once may have a substantial noise issue,” predicts Eric Day of Virginia Tech’s department of entomology. He tells Virginia Tech Daily, “Hopefully, any annoyance at the disturbance is tempered by just how infrequent — and amazing — this event is.”
Space Viruses
from Bloomberg via Yahoo! News
NASA Should Beware of Viruses From Outer Space
by Adam Minter
(Bloomberg Opinion) — This summer, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will launch a rover designed to collect samples of the Martian surface and store them until they can eventually be brought back to Earth. When they arrive, according to a former NASA scientist, they’ll be “quarantined and treated as though they are the Ebola virus until proven safe.”His statement caused a minor media sensation, and understandably so. In the midst of one pandemic, Americans aren’t ready for another imported from outer space. But ready or not, the U.S. and other spacefaring nations need to start updating planetary-protection measures for a new era of spaceflight.In the years ahead, NASA’s Mars initiatives will likely be emulated by other countries. Ambitious private space companies are eager to follow with their own robots (and perhaps, eventually, humans). Clearer safety guidelines are essential both for protecting Earth and for ensuring that a wary public is comfortable with humanity’s next steps into the solar system.
And now from the bright side…
Silver Lining: 2 In 5 Adults Have ‘Changed For The Better’ Thanks To Lockdown
by Jacob Roshgadol
LONDON — Many people have been using their extra time during the coronavirus lockdown wisely and have adopted new habits to keep themselves busy. In fact, a recent survey of 2,000 British adults reveals that 43% of people feel they’ve “changed their ways for the better” as a result of all the time inside these past few months.
Researchers sought to learn how habits and daily lives have changed as a result of the lockdown. Nearly half of those surveyed expect to keep up these new hobbies, skills, and daily habits they’ve taken on after the lockdown restrictions are lifted. Learning new computer skills, creating podcasts, participating in online fitness classes and going for long walks are some of the new activities people have turned to as a new means to occupy their time.
How THE SHINING Was A True Nightmare
‘Making The Shining was hell’: How tormented stars, Kubrick’s temper and box-office disaster led to an immortal horror
Stephen King hated it, but even set fires, bullying accusations, Shelley Duvall’s misery and Razzie nominations couldn’t stop ‘The Shining’. As it turns 40, Geoffrey Macnab speaks to Kubrick’s trusted assistant, and tells the gruelling true story of the production
Jack Nicholson must have needed a lot of toothpaste. When he was starring in Stanley Kubrick’s horror movie The Shining (1980), he felt it a matter of common courtesy to brush his teeth before any new scene. Working on a Kubrick film was, he thought, “gruelling enough” anyway for the crew and his fellow actors without having him breathe over them through “a face full of lamb cutlets”. In her BBC documentary Making the Shining, Vivian Kubrick, the director’s daughter, shows Nicholson bent over the basin, rinsing his mouth. The moment the ritual was complete, he very politely walked back on set, picked up his axe and started trying to hack his co-star Shelley Duvall into pieces all over again with that demented grin on his face. There was take after take after take – and his breath was as fresh at the end of the day at the beginning.
Nicholson was playing Jack Torrance, a troubled writer and recovering alcoholic who takes his wife Wendy (Duvall) and young son Danny (Danny Lloyd) to the Overlook Hotel in the Rockies. Jack is planning to spend the winter as caretaker, working on a book, but he’s an angry, combustible figure anyway and the solitude brings out the devil in him. Little Danny has psychic powers. Through “the shining”, he can sense the evil and violence lurking within the hotel – and inside his own dad, too.
This Shining, which turns 40 tomorrow, is one of Kubrick’s greatest films. This was a director who never took shortcuts and who approached every film he made with a manic zeal to match that of Jack Torrance with his axe. Radiating a slow-burning fury, the movie turns up the intensity from frame to frame, with Nicholson’s performance increasingly deranged. The fast-moving camera work, strident music and intricate but absurdist plotting induce a sense of mounting hysteria in audiences who’ve regularly voted this the scariest movie ever made.
Sam Taylor-Johnson on ‘The Film That Lit My Fuse”
The Film That Lit My Fuse: Sam Taylor-Johnson
By Jake Kanter
The Film That Lit My Fuse is a Deadline video series that aims to provide an antidote to grim headlines about industry uncertainty by swinging the conversation back to the creative ambitions, formative influences and inspirations of some of today’s great screen artists.
Every installment we pose the same five questions, and answering those questions this week is Sam Taylor-Johnson, the BAFTA-nominated British director behind John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, Fifty Shades of Grey, and most recently A Million Little Pieces, on which she collaborated with her husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson. She is currently attached to direct a Paramount Television Studios adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Middlesex, while she is also poised to announce her latest feature at the reimagined Cannes digital film festival.
VC-20 Virus Hits
A pizzeria owner made money buying his own $24 pizzas from DoorDash for $16
This is your brain on venture capital
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There are many things that don’t make sense about global capitalism that I enjoy anyway — the clearly inadvisable, venture-backed monstrosities like dockless scooters and ride-sharing that, in the before times, changed how I interacted with the places I went. The thing that doesn’t compute for me is how these companies continue to burn through a reality-warping amount of other people’s cash in a way that upends the basic economics of things like taxi service and food delivery and fail, intentionally, to turn a profit.
Yesterday, Ranjan Roy, a content strategist and writer, wrote about the latter in his newsletter The Margins; one of his friends who owns a few pizza restaurants suddenly got an influx of customers complaining about delivery when the restaurants didn’t offer delivery. “He realized that a delivery option had mysteriously appeared on their company’s Google Listing. The delivery option was created by Doordash,” Roy wrote.
Apparently, this is one way that DoorDash does customer acquisition — by bullying restaurants. But what’s funnier about Roy’s friend’s problem (and it was a real problem because of Yelp reviews and angry customers) is that DoorDash priced the pizzas incorrectly. “A pizza that he charged $24 for was listed as $16 by Doordash,” emphasis Roy’s. And then: “My third thought: Cue the Wall Street trader in me…..ARBITRAGE!!!!”
And so the story unfolds. “If someone could pay Doordash $16 a pizza, and Doordash would pay his restaurant $24 a pizza, then he should clearly just order pizzas himself via Doordash, all day long. You’d net a clean $8 profit per pizza [insert nerdy economics joke about there is such a thing as a free lunch],” wrote Roy. They order 10 pizzas this way, and it worked! The money was free, a seamless transfer from SoftBank’s deep venture capital-lined pockets to Roy’s friend’s business bank account. Eventually, in another series of what Roy hilariously calls “trades,” they just ordered pizza dough through DoorDash for $75 in pure profit.
“Of course I’m Meg”
In a New Collection of Old Stories, Madeleine L’Engle Is Back
By Heidi Pitlor
In “A Wrinkle in Time,” an adolescent girl’s fury is nothing to be renounced — instead, it’s ammunition to be stockpiled in the battle against evil.
“‘Stay angry, little Meg,’ Mrs Whatsit whispered. ‘You will need all your anger now.’” Mrs Whatsit’s words are radical, written as they were decades before the Riot Grrrl and Girl Power movements and their celebration of female wrath. Meg Murry helped pave the way for Hermione Granger, Katniss Everdeen and Beatrice Prior. With some heavy-duty extrapolation, one might say that Murry’s spirit can also be found in the environmental activist Greta Thunberg (mocked by the president of the United States for being “very angry”), Parkland’s gun control advocate Emma González (called an unimpressive “skinhead lesbian” by one Republican candidate) and countless other young women who have harnessed their outrage into political movements against powerful forces.
When asked, Madeleine L’Engle once admitted, “Of course I’m Meg.” For years, L’Engle fought a culture that scorned girls’ emotions and intelligence. She also faced off against a myopic publishing industry. “A Wrinkle in Time” — a book of speculative fantasy woven through with physics, metaphysics and theology — was rejected by 26 publishers before it found a home. Editors questioned whether the audience would be adults or children. The story was not what people expected from middle-grade fiction; perhaps most galling, the book was not just one thing at all. Meg — and maybe Madeleine — could be angry, but also impatient, loyal, insecure, determined, underachieving. Of course a girl — a person — is never just one thing either.
BRIGHT SHINY MORNING for Harry and Meghan
Letter: A book on the City of Angels fit for a prince
From Lyndon Heal, Madrid, Spain
While I wouldn’t challenge Janan Ganesh’s assertion (FT Weekend, April 25) that ‘the seminal book about 20th century LA by a London professor (Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, by Reyner Banham), might I suggest Prince Harry read James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning as another perfect introduction to the diversity of life in LA.
Lyndon Heal
Madrid, Spain